Comment by Latteland
And also, the customer has the money and gets to make a choice. Sure, supply and demand is a real thing. But there is also a notion of friction blocking the sale. Everyone absolutely hates considering a new purchase that doesn't give you clarity on details and price.
So that CTO says I'm probably not going to bother with you if you don't have a clear price. I also practice this purchasing way. Everyone should. So sure, someone in sales will fight to the death to justify their strategy of obfuscation and charging what the market will bear, and to try to justify their presence in the sales process with some kind of commission and argument about how they caused pain for the buyers and got more money. Meanwhile, company B sold me a widget for whatever, I already paid them, there was no salesperson wasting time on either side.
As a corporate executive, buying things for good prices is a substantial part of your job. You're not some grandma looking for a movie to watch who will bail if she can't figure out how much it costs. Sure, you can refuse to buy things altogether, but it won't be very good for your company - these kinds of companies seem to have been broadly outcompeted by ones that do buy things.